Page 208 of Diego

There isn’t anything inherently unusual about the concept itself. Real estate and layers of LLCs go together often enough that the similarity means very little.

Antonio slides a page toward us.

“The company was linked to another entity registered here. Giovanni sent someone to verify the connection and see whether the Chicago address was legitimate.”

Ricardo reads the page before passing it to me. “When was the last contact?”

Giovanni answers. “He called before entering Chicago. Said he had three locations he intended to check and one more he wanted to verify if the first three gave him anything. After that, nothing.”

“How long ago?” Dante asks.

“Three days.”

I study the addresses while Antonio continues.

“The first two are commercial properties. One is an office suite attached to one of the LLCs. The second is a warehouse that appears in financing documents but nowhere obvious in the ownership chain. The third is a house outside the city.”

Matteo looks up. “Residential?”

“According to the records,” Antonio says. “The ownership is through another company.”

“And the fourth?” I ask.

Nico speaks for the first time since we sat down.

“Another property farther south. He never said he was going there. He only said he wanted to check who owned it.”

His voice fits the rest of him. Quiet, firm, stripped down to what matters.

Ricardo turns the map toward himself. “Do we know which one he reached?”

Giovanni pulls out his phone and places it beside the papers. “The last location we have puts him west of the city. After that, his phone stopped reporting.”

“Stopped or was turned off?” Tomasso asks.

“We don’t know.”

Dante leans over the map and studies the three primary locations. “The office is east of where you lost him.”

“Correct,” Antonio says.

“So unless he doubled back, he had already checked it.”

“That was our assumption.”

I look at the second location.

The warehouse sits farther north.

The house is closest to the last known area.

Ricardo sees it too.

“The house makes the most sense.”

“It does,” Giovanni says. “Which is why I did not want to send anyone there until I spoke with Mario.”

That earns a small degree of respect from me. A missing man belonging to him, a likely location, and three days of silence would be enough justification for plenty of people to move first and explain later.